Morse’s Medicaid: Gov. Hassan is stuck

Medicaid expansion is Obamacare Part II. The goals are the same: get as many people onto government-provided insurance as possible. All the talk about competition and coverage expansion is just talk. It’s all about expanding dependency upon the state.

That is why Senate President Chuck Morse’s plan to use Medicaid dollars to subsidize private insurance for qualified Granite Staters is such a great proposal. He called the Democrats’ bluff. Now they are throwing up every objection that they can, even ones that undermine the party’s position on Obamacare.

State Senate Republicans had proposed moving newly Medicaid-eligible Granite Staters into subsidized private insurance plans purchased on Obamacare’s state insurance exchange, and doing that by 2015. Last week Democrats hilariously complained that this was “unworkable” (Gov. Maggie Hassan’s word) because there is no competition on New Hampshire’s exchange, which is serviced by only Anthem and Delta Dental.

So we saw loyal supporters of Obamacare argue that the state cannot move people on to Obamacare because it is not functioning. Hassan and House Democrats propose waiting three years to make the shift.

They say Obamare’s exchange will be working by then. They also say it will take a really long time for Washington to approve New Hampshire’s waiver request.

The party of government says we must move people onto government insurance because the government is too slow and ineffective in its effort to provide private alternatives, which of course must be obtained only through the government portal, not the private marketplace. You can’t make this stuff up.

They know that once people are put on Medicaid, shifting them to private insurance will be difficult. So they hope that some gullible senators will buy their claim that low-income Granite Staters must be put on government insurance and kept there for years because of the inefficiency of the government. Who could possibly believe that?